My Soul Looks Back: A Memoirby Jessica B. Harris

Read My Soul Looks Back: A Memoir Online Free - In this captivating new memoir, award-winning writer Jessica B. Harris recalls a lost era—the vibrant New York City of her youth, where her social circle included Maya Angelou, James Baldwin, and other members of the Black intelligentsia.

In the Technicolor glow of the early seventies, Jessica B. Harris debated, celebrated, and danced her way from the jazz clubs of the Manhattan's West Side to the restaurants of the Village, living out her buoyant youth alongside the great minds of the day—luminaries like Maya Angelou, James Baldwin, and Toni Morrison. My Soul Looks Back is her paean to that fascinating social circle and the depth of their shared commitment to activism, intellectual engagement, and each other.

Harris paints evocative portraits of her illustrious friends: Baldwin as he read aloud an early draft of If Beale Street Could Talk, Angelou cooking in her California kitchen, and Morrison relaxing at Baldwin’s house in Provence. Harris describes her role as theater critic for the New York Amsterdam News and editor at then burgeoning Essence magazine; star-studded parties in the South of France; drinks at Mikell’s, a hip West Side club; and the simple joy these extraordinary people took in each other’s company. The book is framed by Harris’s relationship with Sam Floyd, a fellow professor at Queens College, who introduced her to Baldwin.

More than a memoir of friendship and first love My Soul Looks Back is a carefully crafted, intimately understood homage to a bygone era and the people that made it so remarkable.

Title

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My Soul Looks Back: A Memoir

Author

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Jessica B. Harris

Rating

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ISBN

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1501125907

Edition Language

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English

Format Type

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Hardcover

Number of Pages

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272 pages

Reviews

Chrystani rated it ★★☆☆☆

June 13, 2017

I fell for it. I took the black millenial bait. "Oh, check her out in that fashionable still relevant outfit on the cover of this book". A black author talking about the great and sexy setting of New York with some heavy weights? Gotta support black women authors you know? YEA, sign me up. I comm...

Jai Danielle rated it ★★★☆☆

July 16, 2017

"It was a time of life lived fully, deeply. Random encounters would smoothly morph into dinners or gatherings that would then be transformed into events that could go well into the wee hours of the morning, but always underneath it all, there was the heartbeat of work and writing and speaking and...

Erin rated it ★★☆☆☆

May 31, 2017

Ms. Harris (who I had never heard of prior to this book) wrote a memoir about having a seat at the cool kids' table. During 1970's New York City where icons-in-the-making like James Baldwin and Maya Angelou were members of an elite group of African American artists during a time when intelligence...

Nascha rated it ★★★★★

July 11, 2017

My Soul Looks Back, a memoir by Jessica B. Harris, appeared on my news feed on Good Reads several times before I finally clicked on its link to read its description and decide if I was interested or not. After reading its brief general description, I was mesmerized. I quickly requested the book a...

Raquel rated it ★★☆☆☆

June 08, 2017

Jessica B. Harris has had a fascinating life --- and I love her descriptions of food, particularly the meals she would have at West Village Spanish restaurant El Faro (RIP). But, it felt a little surface-y to me. She writes that she had deep conversations with luminaries like Maya Angelou, but ne...

Read for work. I had never heard of her before, and now I'm on a Jessica B. Harris binge. James Baldwin and the entire black literary/cultural scene of Manhattan in the 70s (with visits to Hait, West Africa and the South of France), food, Greenwich Village when a beginner journalist could afford...

Tereneh rated it ★★★★☆

July 18, 2017

This lovely memoir painted pictures and palettes of a time that is past and present, future too. The icons of American and Black Excellence of the Black Atlantic culture from the 20th century whose impact is still felt today - Baldwin, Simone, Morrison, Angelou and more. All present. Imagining th...

Erika rated it ★★☆☆☆

June 15, 2017

I expected a soul-searching memoir, but the book seemed more like a description of the famous people Harris knew and their activities. You can tell Harris has a deep interest in cuisine, and I was amazed that she could remember so many of her meals in detail. She described herself as on the perip...

Erin rated it ★★☆☆☆

June 09, 2017

Didn't really like this book. I tried to ignore the reviews on here to let myself be free to inform my own opinion but I found this book to be pretty boring and seemed almost as if these were memories solely for her journal to keep and cherish. The interesting parts of these book however did incr...

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About the author

Jessica B. Harris According to Heritage Radio Network, there's perhaps no greater expert on the food and foodways of the African Diaspora than Doctor Jessica B. Harris. She is the author of twelve critically acclaimed cookbooks documenting the foods and foodways of the African Diaspora including Iron Pots and Wooden Spoons: Africa's Gifts to New World Cooking, Sky Juice and Flying Fish Traditional Caribbean Cooking, The Welcome Table: African American Heritage Cooking, The Africa Cookook: Tastes of a Continent, Beyond Gumbo: Creole Fusion Food from the Atlantic Rim. Harris also conceptualized and organized The Black Family Reunion Cook Book.Her most recent book, High on the Hog: A Culinary Journey from Africa to America, was the International Association for Culinary Professionals 2012 prize winner for culinary history.In her more than three decades as a journalist, Dr. Harris has written book reviews, theater reviews, travel, feature, and beauty articles too numerous to note. She has lectured on African-American food and culture at numerous institutions throughout the United States and Abroad and has written extensively about the culture of Africa in the Americas, particularly the foodways. In the most recent edition of the Encyclopedia of American Food and Drink, author John Mariani cites Harris as the ranking expert on African American Foodways in the country. An award winning journalist, Harris has also written in numerous national and international publications ranging from Essence to German Vogue. She's a contributing editor at Saveur and drinks columnist and contributing editor at Martha's Vineyard magazine. In 2012, she began a monthly radio show on Heritage Radio Network, My Welcome Table, that focuses on Food. Travel, Music, and Memoir.

Dr. Harris has been honored with many awards including a lifetime achievement award from the Southern Foodways Alliance (of which she is a founding member) and the Lafcadio Hearn award as a Louisiana culinary icon from The John Folse Culinary Academy at Louisiana's Nicholls State University. In 2010, she was inducted into the James Beard Who's Who of Food and Beverage in the United States.

Dr. Harris holds degrees from Bryn Mawr College, Queens College, New York, The Université de Nancy, France, and New York University. Dr. Harris was the inaugural scholar in residence in the Ray Charles Chair in African-American Material Culture at Dillard University in New Orleans where she established an Institute for the Study of Culinary Cultures. Dr. Harris has been a professor of English at Queens College/C.U.N.Y. for more than four decades. She is also a regular presenter at the annual Literary Festival in Oxford, England, a Patron of Oxford Gastronomica at Oxford/Brookes University in Oxford, England, and a consultant to the Lowcountry Rice Culture Project in South Carolina. She is currently at work developing a center for connecting culinary cultures in New Orleans.

In 2012, Dr. Harris was asked by the Smithsonian's National Museum of African American History and Culture to conceptualize and curate the cafeteria of the new museum which is being built on the Mall in Washington DC that is scheduled to open in 2015 and is a member of the Kitchen Cabinet at the Smithsonian Museum of American History. The Heritage Radio Network sums her up saying, "Doctor Jessica B. Harris damn near knows it all when it comes to African and Caribbean cuisines and culinary history. She's a living legend". Harris lives in New York, New Orleans and Martha's Vineyard.

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